Years ago I saw an alchemist do a demonstration where he poured a full glassof what appeared to be water into another glass full of again, what appearedto be water. The first glass full was completely absorbed by the other with no spillage.

I have also seen the same thing done even more years ago on the annual RoyalInstitute Christmas lectures

If you are still around, the first port of call should be Lawrence Principe's book "The secrets of alchemy", for a general overview. There's no need to read any other book by anyone else, except the early ones by F. Sherwood Taylor and E. J. Holmyard for other background. Most populist modern books (i.e. last 30 years) are not very good.

Depending how nerdy you are, and what precise decade you wish to portray, there can be quite large differences in what alchemy is and what you do in it.THe topic is so huge and difficult that I could write a book about it. (Wait, I already did a 15k e-book on medieval and Tudor alchemy, which I could probably sell to you)

The internet has a horrendous mixture of fact, good research, and bad research. Going back to the primary sources is a minefield for a newbie, since the ones available in English are merely a small slice of what was actually written, and therefore you end up with a false picture of the field.

The tricky bit is distilling out of the medieval alchemical works and modern research into them, something that you can show to the public. The first thing to remember is that showing magic tricks with water, or colour changing water and talking about acid and alkali, or making gunpowder, is totally wrong in every way possible.But if I tell you all that I do, that would be akin to giving you all my work for free.

Is this project still ongoing? The reason I ask is that starting a fortnight ago, bus travel fares have been abolished on selected Welsh routes, therefore if there is something happening in relation to this in Wales of a weekend then I am now in a position to attend.

JW, to answer your question, there are no chemicals that can be mixed that would do this so I think it's more likely to be a trick centered around the containers themselves, with secret compartments for example. Did you have a good look at the containers?

I'm not sure what you are referring to. My project is just in the next 12/24 months to be able to have enough knowledge/equipment to be able to propose to any client in the North-east of the UK the re-enactment of an alchemist lab. It has nothing to do with current events, I don't even have any contact of client who could book me for such shows, just an interest in being able to do so.

Tetardd wrote:JW, to answer your question, there are no chemicals that can be mixed that would do this so I think it's more likely to be a trick centered around the containers themselves, with secret compartments for example. Did you have a good look at the containers?

In the case of the Royal Institute Christmas lectures the liquidswere in 2 standard lab beakers

The fact that it was on the Christmas lectures indicates thatno trickery was involved